Polygraph Testing
Lizor et al.
the question and they respond,” they should “definitely have an interpreter there.”
The frustrations and stress of speechreading during normal daily activities are different
than being under pressure taking the polygraph with probing personal questions. The third female
participant noted that “I was so stressed out with not being sure if I was being understood, trying
to lip read, all of this causes a lot of anxiety for me…obviously an interpreter is needed.” The sixth
female participant repeated several times that she needed an interpreter as she did not understand
what was being said. The fourth male participant said that “English is not my first language,” and
because he uses ASL to communicate, “there must be a fully certified interpreter placed in the
examination.”
During the follow up interview after the second polygraph examination was completed in
Phase II, 11 out of 14 of the participants specifically noted how much better the process went
having a certified legal interpreter. The first male participant found out that with the interpreter
present going back over the booklet, they had found that he misunderstood some of the questions
initially. There was a question with two parts and he read the first part, but not the second, and
therefore answered all but one question in that portion incorrectly. He thought if he answered yes
for one item, it meant that all the items were to be answered as yes. He made a profound statement:
If I answered the way I did, in real life, the deception would have found me guilty
and I would have been put in jail, even though I would have been innocent. It would
have been because I made that mistake on the paper.
This participant commented that people need to be very careful in how they read the questions.
Having the interpreter there to interpret the questions being asked by the examiner during the pre-
test interview, he was able to realize he had made an error in answering. This realization parallels
what the third male participant had said earlier about not having an interpreter and possibly being
sent to jail due to misunderstandings.
The participants noted the improved communication with the interpreter present. Many of
them commented that it was “much better” or “a lot better” than the first time. The fifth female
participant noted that “it was more effective because if I did not understand [the examiner] I would
look at the interpreter and the interpreter would sign it to me to make sure I understood it
correctly.” The fourth male participant noted that having an interpreter present, “I understood
everything much more easily and it saved our time as well.”
Even though participants noted that Phase II was much better with an interpreter present,
over half (eight out of 14) commented that they would have liked to have a Certified Deaf
Interpreter (CDI) present. 2 The second female participant noted that she would feel more
comfortable if the interpreter was “deaf, just like me.” The fourth female participant said that the
reason why she would prefer a CDI is that a CDI uses “native ASL to match the needs of the deaf
person who is taking the exam.” Although the third female participant said that she understood the
hearing interpreter, she felt that for other deaf people, a CDI “would help them understand the
message more clearly, for sure.” In the case of the fifth male participant who could not complete
the polygraph examination for either Phase I or II, he commented that a CDI “would help make it
2
A CDI is a person who is deaf and has taken training to become an interpreter. A CDI is paired with a hearing
interpreter who listens to the hearing speaker, signs the message to the CDI, then the CDI signs the message clearly
in a way that can be best understood by the deaf person (using gestures, more visual approaches, idiosyncratic signs,
native ASL). The deaf person then signs the response to the CDI, who then relays it to the hearing interpreter, who
then speaks the message to the hearing person.
SASLJ, Vol. 2, No.1 – Spring/Summer 2018
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